Digital multimedia receiver systems, such as satellite receivers, are subject to momentary signal loss due to rain fade, and other sources of interference. Rain fade as well as other types of interference ultimately have the same effect—they cause the satellite system to lose some of its normal signal level. This discontinuous signal can cause problems in system timing and in the data processing due to short packets. When a problem occurs, the receiver may continue to send data out of memory but it may be repeating packets that are incomplete, contain errors, or are timed incorrectly.
Discontinuous transport signals are often a problem for a receiver. For example, rain fade in a satellite system causes momentary discontinuities of the received signal and may lock up the system. The output of the system may look like it is still sending valid packets but the packets may be timed incorrectly, or may comprise the wrong length, repeated packets from an earlier reception, or out of order packets. This is primarily due to the loss of synchronization between the read and write pointers inside large memory buffers. Detection of this loss of synchronization can be difficult without decoding the video and actually examining the resultant pictures or lack of pictures due to errors.
In normal consumer receivers that have satellite dishes on the property, the consumer can reset the system by unplugging the receiver or pushing a reset button to restart the receiver to clear the memory of the bad data. On professional systems, such as servers for apartment buildings (MFH3—multi-family housing gateway) and airplanes (Live TV™), the satellite receiver is located in a main signal room or some other location where the end consumer does not have control of or access to the box. In such situations, the consumer would have to call in the service provider to have the server reset, which is often inconvenient, time-consuming and in some cases not possible without disrupting the entire service. This can occur in any server application where the transport stream is repackaged and sent out over a wireless connection, a distribution center, or the Ethernet.